Energy Department, U.S.

News about Energy Department, U.S., including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

Chronology of Coverage

May. 20, 2015

Energy Department report finds that next generation of turbines could allow wind energy production in additional 700,000 square miles of United States, area that would encompass all 50 states for first time; new machinery would be far taller, reaching from 360 to 460 feet high. MORE

May. 8, 2015

Leaders of European and American particle physics initiatives sign data-sharing agreement at White House ceremony; organizations include Dept of Energy, National Science Foundation and CERN; agreement will allow the United States to continue collaborating on the Large Hadron Collider, world's flagship particle experiment. MORE

May. 6, 2015

Agreement between Energy Dept and New Mexico will allow Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad to reopen; nuclear waste storage facility has been closed since early 2014 following radiation leak. MORE

Jan. 31, 2015

Energy Dept sells Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming to New York-based Stranded Oil Resources for $45.2 million. MORE

Jan. 14, 2015

Energy Dept projects domestic crude oil production will continue to rise, though at slowed rate, despite plummeting prices on global market; projects average production of 9.3 million barrels a day in 2015, with average price of $58 per barrel throughout year. MORE

Oct. 30, 2014

Energy Department says February plutonium waste accident at New Mexico repository will cost at least $551 million to clean up before site can be reopened; chemical reaction came as blow to country's efforts to clean up old nuclear weapons manufacturing sites and has forced government to take extraordinary measures to prevent repetition. MORE

Oct. 8, 2014

Energy Department estimates that many American consumers will spend considerably less on energy costs in coming winter; says that a warmer season is expected, saving natural gas customers 5 percent on their heating bill and propane customers 34 percent. MORE

Jul. 9, 2014

Pres Obama announces that he will nominate Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall to be deputy secretary of energy for the Energy Department; currently National Security Council's top nuclear proliferation and defense policy official, Sherwood-Randall would join department at a moment when it is remaking nation's nuclear weapons complex and figuring out politics of boom in oil and gas fracking. MORE

Apr. 18, 2014

Energy Department inspector general report says long before it lost $68 million on bankrupt solar business Abound Solar, it should have known that company's chance of repaying loan was deteriorating; report is issued as Obama administration prepares to offer as much as $8 billion in additional loan guarantees. MORE

Mar. 13, 2014

Energy Department reports rising heating costs nationwide during unusually bitter winter; Midwestern residents who rely on propane are expected to spend 54 percent more than year before, while those in the Northeast, who rely on heating oil, will pay only 7 percent more. MORE

Mar. 2, 2014

Sen Ron Wyden of Oregon expresses concern over high-level radioactive waste at Energy Dept's Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State, which is just across the Columbia River from Oregon. MORE

Feb. 19, 2014

Energy Sec Ernest Moniz is set to announce that he will finish a $6.5 billion loan guarantee and another soon for $1.8 billion to help three Georgia electric companies build first new nuclear reactors in United States in three decades; announcement comes far later than anticipated and may effectively end loan program established in 2005 by Congress, which at one point had promised to support $50 billion in loans for nuclear projects. MORE

Dec. 13, 2013

Energy Department awards small company NuScale Power up to $226 million to advance the design of tiny nuclear reactors; new designs would allow reactors to be placed under water, greatly reducing chance of meltdown and opening the door to markets around the world that cannot accommodate large reactors. MORE

Nov. 29, 2013

Energy Department began cleaning up South Carolina's Savannah River nuclear weapons plant in 1996, but work occurring is at such slow pace that completion of cleanup by projected date of 2023 appears highly unlikely; department says work may not be finished until the 2040s, setting off fierce battle between it and state, which threatens $154 million in fines. MORE

Nov. 20, 2013

Federal appeals court rules that the Energy Dept must stop collecting fees of about $750 million a year that are paid by consumers and intended to fund a program for the disposal of nuclear waste, program which is no longer in operation. MORE

Sep. 20, 2013

Obama administration decides to revive controversial green energy loan guarantee program at Energy Department, even as program remains under Congressional scrutiny after losing hundreds of millions on failed investments like solar module maker Solyndra; new version of program will devote as much as $8 billion to helping industries like coal and oil produce cleaner energy. MORE

Jul. 10, 2013

United States Department of Energy begins study, billed as country’s largest-ever urban airflow project, in New York City aimed at better understanding airflow of contaminants, including possible chemical weapons; emits nontoxic, odorless and invisible gas in scores of subway stations. MORE

Jun. 28, 2013

Energy Secretary Ernest J Moniz says short-term plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions outlined by Pres Obama is achievable with some additional programs and better management of existing ones; adds that reaching longer-term goal will require bigger reductions as well as action from Congress. MORE

Jun. 14, 2013

Three-year effort at Energy Dept has stanched leaks of sulfur hexafluoride equivalent to 1.1 million tons of carbon dioxide; it is most potent greenhouse gas in existence. MORE

Jun. 13, 2013

White House blocks several Department of Energy regulations that would require appliances, lighting and buildings to use less energy and create less global-warming pollution, as part of a broader slowdown of new anti-pollution rules issued by Obama administration. MORE

May. 22, 2013

The company, using money it raised last week in the markets, is repaying the government nine years before its loan was due. MORE

Mar. 30, 2013

Ernest J Moniz, President Obama’s nominee for energy secretary, agrees to resign his positions at BP and King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, as well as sell shares, if confirmed. MORE

Mar. 6, 2013

Editorial praises Pres Obama's nomination of Gina McCarthy to run Environmental Protection Agency and Ernest Moniz to run Energy Department; holds both nominees suggest a broad attack on global warming, one of humanity's most pressing challenges; outlines strategies that could make a dent on carbon emissions. MORE

Mar. 5, 2013

President Obama names Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency and Ernest J Moniz to run the Energy Department; nominations illustrate his intent to use all the tools at his disposal to tackle climate change and energy policy if Congress does not act quickly. MORE

Feb. 2, 2013

Energy Secretary Steven Chu says he will leave office soon, possibly by end of February; Chu's four-year tenure has been marked by his fostering research and development of clean energy technologies, while opponents pilloried him over stimulus loans that went bad. MORE

Oct. 7, 2012

Editorial urges Congress to consider carefully whether Energy Department's laser fusion project at National Ignition Facility should be scrapped to help reduce federal spending; outlines concerns about the project's utility for the nation's nuclear energy and nuclear weapon options. MORE

Sep. 24, 2012

Energy Department plan to dispose of stockpiles of uranium 233, a substitute for uranium that is no longer needed, has come under criticism from some experts who worry that the disposal presents a security risk. MORE

Sep. 1, 2012

Internal audit of Energy Department operations at a weapons facility near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, finds significant problems with security at the site, which contains the national stockpile of bomb-grade uranium; audit was prompted by three antiwar protesters breaking into the facility with ease. MORE

Aug. 8, 2012

Sister Megan Gillespie Rice, 82-year-old nun, and fellow pacifists Michael R Walli and Gregory I Boertje-Obed, who broke in to the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons site in Tennessee, will appear in court to face charges of trespassing and spray-painting antiwar slogans; incident has also put the Energy Dept's security system on trial; private experts criticize agency's safeguarding of nuclear stockpiles. MORE

Jun. 14, 2012

Energy Department is taking control of tons of uranium left over from USEC, a company it created in the 1990s to privatize uranium enrichment; calls the rescue vital to maintaining nuclear weapons and national security. MORE

Apr. 6, 2012

Energy Department, six months after the expiration of a program that backed $16 billion in loans to solar, wind and geothermal energy projects, is subsidizing an existing loan guarantee program to encourage more applications. MORE

Mar. 19, 2012

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is set to release report arguing that the Energy Department overrode the objection of some staff members in order to pick aid recipients despite fact that their products were not actually innovative; supporters of the Energy Department said that there was no requirement that the loans be for novel technology, and that the department stuck to a standard adopted during the Bush administration requiring only that the projects use technology not yet commercialized in the United States. MORE

Feb. 11, 2012

White House audit finds that the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program for alternative energy projects, which produced the ill-fated loan to the solar panel maker Solyndra, needs more rigorous financial oversight and stricter performance standards for recipients to reduce the chance of future defaults. MORE

Nov. 17, 2011

Energy Secretary Steven Chu will defend the program that loaned $535 million to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra, which went bankrupt, at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee; panel has spent months arguing that the Energy Department showed political favoritism and incompetence in approving the loan. MORE

Nov. 16, 2011

Energy Department Inspector General Gregory H Friedman issues a report calling for a wholesale restructuring of the department's far-flung laboratories and other operations; study finds that only half of the $13 billion spent annually on the department's 16 separate federal laboratories goes toward actual research, with 49 percent paying for overhead and capital spending. MORE